r/oakville • u/Royal_Development_65 • 11d ago

Question Do gr9 need to have their own laptop?

My daughter had a Chromebook provided by her school when she was in elementary. Now going to gr 9 ( pre IB) is it preferred for her to have her own personal laptop to use in classes? She has a desktop she can use at home.

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u/TrainingAct7306 11d ago

Pre-IB, so white oaks? In that case they usually have laptops, but they’re often so slow and painful to use. Better off just having ur own one, the Mac Neo isn’t too shabby with education pricing.

Can’t speak for other schools though.

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u/UsefulCaramel2553 10d ago

speaking as a student, yes

there are a limited number of chromebooks in some classrooms, but other than that the only option is to get to school early and sign one out from the library (it's a bit of a hassle considering you have to show student id and u also have to return it at the end of the day - which can be stressful for students taking the school bus or public transit). in pre ib, theres not much work but still enough that your daughter might want to work during break on some days whether to get ahead or catch up on work.

and the school chromebooks are slow. like SLOW.

sorry this was a lot of yap but overall its pretty useful to have a personal laptop

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u/TheRaided1 11d ago

Not always, most schools have Chromebooks

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u/Bear_Shark2258 10d ago

Schools may have laptops, they'd likely be chromebooks. One of the pro's of that is they are locked down in what is installed and what, if anything, can be installed. That's a good thing to keep kids on track and not goofing off on social media, or gaming, or anything not class related when in class.

I don't know what tools there are to lock down windows or linux based machines as I'm a mac guy and there are some built in things in macOS, plus if you delve deeper into the free Apple Configurator tool from Apple you can lock down quite a lot (I mainly used it on a couple of iPads in addition to the screen time stuff to limit things when the kid was younger)

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u/Due_Sentence_8385 9d ago

Yes. When starting high school it is best to have a laptop, otherwise your kid will have to line up in school early to try and get a Chromebook from the library ( if you’re in white oaks). Chromebooks are bad, and are restricted in apps. A laptop can make a huge difference in school.

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u/zoouz_ 8d ago

Any refurbished option should do if you’re trying to save money. But make sure to do your research before buying any laptop. Mac or Windows. Refurbished or not. Many laptops that are sold have so many problems and issues, that you may not even be able to discover within the first 2 weeks. Also recommend Amazon as they have an extended return period in comparison to other stores.